Judges 9
Gideon's son Abimelech hires mercenaries, slaughters his seventy half-brothers, seizes the kingship of Shechem, and dies three years later under a millstone.
Summary
Abimelech goes to his mother's relatives in Shechem and appeals to the men of the city through them: which is better, that seventy sons rule over you, or one man? And remember that I am your bone and your flesh. The Shechemites give him seventy pieces of silver from Baal-berith's temple and Abimelech hires worthless and reckless men, goes to his father's house at Ophrah, and kills his seventy brothers, sons of Gideon, on one stone. Only Jotham, the youngest, escapes by hiding. The men of Shechem and Beth-millo make Abimelech king by the oak at the pillar at Shechem. Jotham stands atop Mount Gerizim and calls down to them, telling the Parable of the Trees: the trees went to anoint a king over themselves. They asked the olive tree, the fig tree, and the vine in turn; each refused, citing the value of its own fruit. Finally they asked the bramble, which said: if in good faith you are anointing me king over you, come and take refuge in my shade, but if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon. Jotham applies the parable as a curse and flees to Beer.
Abimelech rules three years. The Lord sends an evil spirit between him and the men of Shechem, who begin to deal treacherously, robbing travellers and ambushing. A man named Gaal son of Ebed comes to Shechem and incites rebellion at the vintage festival. Zebul the ruler of Shechem sends word to Abimelech, who attacks the city at dawn. Abimelech fights all day. He captures the city and kills its people and sows it with salt. The men who had gone into the tower of Shechem are burned when Abimelech cuts down branches and piles them against the tower and sets it on fire — about a thousand people die. Abimelech moves on to Thebez, captures it, but when he comes near the tower there to burn it, a woman drops an upper millstone on his head and crushes his skull. He immediately says to his armor-bearer: draw your sword and thrust me through, so they cannot say a woman killed me. His armor-bearer thrusts him through and he dies. Thus God returned the evil of Abimelech upon his head.
- Judges 1Chapter 1 functions as a historiographical preface to the whole book, cataloguing the success or failure of each tribe to dispossess the Canaanites after Joshua's death.
- Judges 2Chapter 2 is the hermeneutical key to Judges.
- Judges 3Chapter 3 introduces the judge cycle in action for the first time.
- Judges 4Chapter 4 is the prose account of the same events that chapter 5 will sing.
- Judges 5The Song of Deborah in chapter 5 is widely considered one of the oldest pieces of Hebrew poetry in the entire Bible, possibly dating to the twelfth century BCE, nearly contemporaneous with the events it describes.
- Judges 6Chapter 6 is the opening of the Gideon narrative, which runs through chapter 8 and is the longest major-judge story in the book.
- Judges 7Chapter 7 is the central action of the Gideon narrative and one of the most memorable military scenes in the book.
- Judges 8Chapter 8 is the darkest portion of the Gideon narrative.
- Judges 9Chapter 9 is the longest chapter in Judges and the only episode in the book devoted to an anti-judge — a man who makes himself king by violence and holds it for exactly three years.
- Judges 10Chapter 10 performs two functions.
- Judges 11Chapter 11 is one of the most morally complex chapters in the Hebrew Bible.
- Judges 12Chapter 12 begins with a conflict that is structurally parallel to the Ephraimite quarrel after Gideon's battle in chapter 8, but this time Jephthah's response is not diplomacy — it is war.
- Judges 13Chapter 13 is the birth narrative of Samson, and it is the most elaborate annunciation scene in Judges.
- Judges 14Chapter 14 introduces the adult Samson and establishes the pattern that will govern the rest of his narrative: a desire for a Philistine woman, a display of supernatural strength, a riddle or trap, betrayal by intimacy.
- Judges 15Chapter 15 escalates the private vendetta between Samson and the Philistines into a series of increasingly spectacular acts of violence.
- Judges 16Chapter 16 is the climax and conclusion of the Samson narrative.
- Judges 17Chapter 17 begins the two-part appendix with which Judges closes, and the shift in tone is immediate.
- Judges 18Chapter 18 is the first of the book's two closing appendices.
- Judges 19Chapter 19 is one of the most disturbing chapters in the Hebrew Bible, and the text makes no attempt to soften it.
- Judges 20Chapter 20 is the longest military account in Judges and is remarkable for what it shows about what has gone wrong with Israel as a political and moral community.
- Judges 21Chapter 21 closes the book and extends the moral horror of chapter 19-20 in a different register: the horror of improvised solutions to self-inflicted catastrophe.